


you and me, you and me against the world

by seraphcelene



Category: The Kissing Booth (2018)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphcelene/pseuds/seraphcelene
Summary: There has to be more to the story, right?  Pre-Movie Origin story. This is my hit or miss pass at Elle and Flynn over the years. Not even they saw it coming.





	you and me, you and me against the world

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen the Netflix movie and that is all. This has absolutely no ties to the book At All. 
> 
> I was looking for a reason for Noah's anger management issues and wound up defeated by the fact that his parent's don't have names. Make of that what you will. 
> 
> Title from Blackout by Tritonal feat Steph Jones. I haven't written fanfic in a really long time and this is weird and rusty. Un-beta'd, so watch your fingers. The Kissing Booth and all related characters belong to Beth Reekles, Netflix, and sundry others who are not me. I'm just taking them out for a little exercise.

**10.**

Flynn takes a tiny, stunted breath, and inhales strawberry and cut grass, baby powder and sweat. At the edge of his vision, in the corner of his eye, a shadow stretches alongside his on the ground. A thin stripe of pig-tailed girl standing well below his shoulders. Elle, small for her age despite the lie that her shadow tells. Somewhere else in the house, Lee isn't much bigger. 

He can't breathe. 

Fear lodges in Flynn's chest and twines around his racing heart. Everything in his body is pulled up sharp, muscles quivering as he stands poised to fly across the room. He squeezes his fingers together tighter, his fist a nugget of compressed rage at the end of his wrist. Then, a whisper across his knuckles, the brush of fingers, and Flynn flinches. 

He doesn't bother to look down, not at first, but then a tiny pinky finger finds a seam in the clench of his fist and forces its way in to curl around his middle finger. He isn't prepared for the breach and the tightness in his chest loosens. The edges of the room soften and swim into a smear of light and color. Horrified, Flynn blinks rapidly. His jaw clenches and he strangles the tiny finger trapped in the lace of his fist.

“Go back outside,” Dad says, voice low and rough.

Flynn doesn't move, stands there swallowing back tears and refusing to leave his mother behind.

“Mom?” Flynn finally says, low and uneven, her name a symphony of questions in his husky, wobbly voice.

His mother shakes her head, a barely noticeable shift of her chin before turning back to his father, and for a moment Flynn thinks that this is the moment that he will shatter. If he can't protect his mother, smart and fast and big enough to run, what possible chance does he have to protect Elle or Lee? They're babies. He is the only thing standing between them and disaster. 

“It's okay, baby,” his mother says, her voice just as shaky. She's watching her husband steadily. In the trap of his father's hand, her fingers are clenched, too.

“Maybe we can all go outside,” Elle says slowly. Her words careful, slow and drawn out, and not quite a question.

This time Flynn does looks down, taking another, deeper breath and letting Elle's sweaty little girl scent wash over him. Her pigtails are ragged and spotted with twigs and leaves. Stray hairs curl and stick to her neck and face. She looks up at Flynn, eyes very blue and very wide. She watches him for a moment and whatever she sees makes her frown, makes the fragile light in her eyes harden. She tugs at Flynn's fist with the crook of her finger curled over his. 

“C'mon, Noah,” she says. When she turns back to Flynn's parents she squares her shoulders and licks her lips. Her mouth tightens and Flynn recognizes stubbornness in the tense line of her jaw. “You, too, Mr. Flynn. Lee's outside waiting to play kick ball.” 

For a moment dread coils tight in Flynn's belly. He exhales half a breath and wants nothing more than to hit something or to yell. The idea of them playing at family, the recently forgotten reality of what that had meant erased months ago.

“Lee,” Dad says, his gaze flicking from Flynn to Elle and back again. The angry darkness in his eyes fades, something about the idea of Lee waiting for him. Lee, still covered in baby fat and committed to wearing whatever stupid costume he can get away with at Halloween. “I don't … sorry,” he says without looking at his wife. His shoulders sink and he lets go. 

Mom nods and says, “It's fine.” She brushes a hand down her husband's arm and smiles. “It'll be fine.” Turning to Flynn and to Elle, she claps her hands, her tense smile widening beneath her glassy eyes with a cheeriness that makes Flynn want to kick something. “Okay. Let's go play some kickball.”

Outside, they split, girls versus boys except Flynn says he doesn't want to play. He sits on the ground, pulling up handfuls of grass and letting the wind snatch them away. Two goals in, Elle trips and grabs her left ankle. She hobbles over to where Lee sits and lowers herself down beside him. She sits close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body. She crosses her ankles, right over left and in that moment, Noah realizes there's nothing wrong with her ankle at all. He scootches over a tiny bit, just enough to lean his shoulder in to hers and inhale her dirt and strawberry scent.

***

**13.**

He nailed some kid in the jaw at the bus stop, and now Flynn's parents pace the length of the couch, whispering to each other and watching him with long side glances. He rubs his knuckles, pressing into the split, bruised skin and relishing the pain. It keeps everything grounded, the whole shifting, electric world suddenly static and pinned in place by the web of pain across his knuckles.

“Why, Noah,” his father asks. “I just … I don't understand.”

Flynn clenches his jaw, face lowered. He stares at his father's brown loafers and shrugs. He doesn't say anything about Elle's miserable eyes and the way the other boy had laughed and reached out for her arm. He doesn't say anything about the red behind his eyes and the gap between stepping off the school bus and the first deeply satisfying smack of his fist in the other boy's face.

Mom sits on the edge of the coffee table and takes his hands. She brushes her cool thumbs across the hot skin of his split knuckles and makes a low sound in the back of her throat. Something like misery and pain, and maybe understanding. She pushes the hair back off his forehead and grips his chin, forcing him to look up at her. 

There are things that Flynn's mom knows even when he doesn't tell her. It always throws him off, catches him up. He doesn't want to meet her eyes. 

“Noah, I know it was really hard around here for a while. But Daddy and I went to talk to someone and we worked on all the things that were bothering us. Everything's okay now and I think that you should go talk to someone, too.”

Flynn shrugs. Just because she's happy, doesn't mean that he's happy and sometimes he isn't sure what to think of her and his father and the months when his father seemed always ready to hit or shake or shout. But now they are supposed to be a Happy Family and it's almost like it had never happened. 

He shrugs, tugs his chin out of her hand and tilts his head down to his chest. 

She leans in and kisses the top of his hand, her cool hands cupped around his face.

“It's okay, baby. Everything'll be okay.”

***

**16.**

Flynn likes girls and Elle blows raspberries at his back whenever he leaves to go on dates. Lee laughs hysterically and falls over onto the couch or into the pool. Flynn smirks, and gives them the middle finger behind his back.

“Night, Lee. Night, Shelly,” he shouts as he slams the door closed.

There is a fight. There's always a fight and Flynn listens to his father lecturing and then cajoling, bargaining.

He says, “save it for the football field" and “Noah, you're too old for this kind of behavior” and “why is it always the same thing with you over and over again.”

Flynn shrugs and studies his fingernails, slouched into the couch like it's no big deal and whatever. Occasionally, he looks up, eyes shielded by the fringe of his hair across his forehead, to see Elle and Lee peeking around the wall at the top of the staircase. Very carefully, when his father's back is turned, he winds one hand beside the opposite fist and, for the second time that night, extends his middle finger to the sky.

Lee cracks a smile and rolls his eyes as if to say, _same old Flynn_. He taps the wall in dismissal as he turns away. Elle remains. Leaning beside the stairs for a moment more, she does not smile. Her eyes are wide and worried. Flynn tilts his hands up, his face full of sardonic 'what' and he rolls his eyes, too. Only his eyes say, whatever and get over yourself, and no big deal.

Finally, Elle shakes her head, mouth tight, and follows Lee back to his room.

***

**18.**

It's not always about Elle, except when it is and then it's more than just being pissed off. 

Sometimes it's about Lee or a grade, a tackle at practice or a crappy pass in a game. Occasionally, it's some stupid asshole's face side-eyeing him from across the room. Sometimes, it's habit. 

“A bad habit,” Dr. Lindsey had said. “Repressed resentment doesn't have to resolve itself into physical violence, Noah.” 

Flynn paced. The office was just big enough that Flynn felt less trapped. With it's floor to ceiling windows, the balcony, and beyond that the ocean. Ten long steps from the door to the window. Turn. Ten steps back.

Dr. Lindsey leaned forward, her elbows braced on her knees. “I'd like to suggest building a toolkit. Strategies for dealing with your anger _before_ it gets physical.”

Noah smirked. One finger jammed beneath the aggressively purple rubber bracelet around his wrist, rotating it in ceaseless circles. He glanced at Dr. Lindsey from the corner of his eyes as he turned at the door. Ten steps. Windows and light, an illusion of space.

“It's always physical,” Flynn muttered.

“It doesn't have to be. Sooner or later you have to deal with the anger, Noah.”

Flynn turned. Ten steps to the door.

“Do you want to talk about your father?”

One moment his fingers were tangled around the bracelet, the school emblem stamped into the rubber surface, the next his fist was buried in a hole in the wall.

“Sorry,” he muttered. Flynn stepped back from the wall, shook his hand lightly “I do not want to talk about my father.” Ten steps to the window.

It was like that. Rage boiling up and burning out so fast that half the time, Flynn can't even remember what set him off in the first place. Except when it's about Elle. 

On the first day of school it's about Elle. It's about Elle in that epic-ally ridiculous skirt. Not like it was the first time he had seen her like that: all curves, stacked and filled out. She lays around the pool at the house often enough, even with the extra inches whittled onto her figure in the weeks since he had been at football camp. 

This time though, this time ... 

... it was everyone watching her and then fucking Tuppen slapping her ass like she was just anybody. Like she was one of the O-M-fucking-G's and not Elle. As if Flynn hadn't known her for her entire life, as if she had never brought him ice cream when he was sick in bed with a fever, as if he hadn't been the one to cannonball her from the second story that first time. Frozen at the edge of the upper patio and Lee had raced past her and hurled himself thoughtlessly, joyfully into space. Elle stood there, peering over the edge, face written over with panic, and Lee goading her from down in the pool. _Okay, Shelly,_ he had said, took three long steps back and ran straight for her. Elle turned, shrieked, and Flynn, his arms firmly around her waist carried her over the edge. The splash had been huge and Elle cussed at him, and then laughed, relief and exuberance all over her face. Flynn swam laps after. Calmed his racing heart, willed his heated body to cool, and rinsed away the memory of Elle's softness, the light in her eyes.

Elle is that girl. Pretty and smart, scared and brave. Not his sister, but still family. The girl in the pool, the girl on the stairs, the girl who had held his hand and sat with him in the grass.

On the first day of school, Flynn is already standing when Lee swings and Tuppen catches his fist. Suddenly, like always, Flynn is the thing standing between Lee and Elle and disaster. He doesn't really think about it. He's just across the parking lot, straddling Tuppen and ...

“Noah!”

At first, Flynn doesn't hear the sound of his name. Elle's voice is only so much static in his ears, and the rush of his blood drowns out everything except for the deeply satisfying thud of his fist into Tuppen's face. There is no stopping. This is habit and rage and disaster. 

Then it's Elle saying his name. She hates it when he fights, and he knows it.

Flynn isn't sure how to stop. His fists are what he knows, what he has. What he is good at. Elle is smart and pretty and half of a whole. Elle'n'Lee. He is Flynn. Party of one. Not even one of many Flynn's. Singular. Flynn. Except when Elle says his name, his first name, and it's everything. Her pinky in the crush of his fist. The place beyond the rage. 

And then Noah kisses Elle at the carnival and the knot in his chest unwinds. For the first time in a long time, he is thinking of strategies. Windows and light, the reality of space.


End file.
